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Description: | Roman or Medieval lead weight, most probably it would have been used as spindle whorl. However, it is mis-shapen, most probably miscast. The perforation is not intact and the reverse of the whorl has not been cast properly - perhaps the pieces of the mould got mis-aligned during the casting process and thus the then liquid lead could not be cast into its final shape. Thus, this object is propably a wasteproduct which for whatever reason did not re-enter the recycling process.
The decoration is very faint on the surviving surface and may have comprised of a star.
It has been noted that the weight of a spindle whorl is demostrative of the thickness of yarn produced, with lighter spindle whorls (3-5g) being used for spinning cotton and heavier ones (30-35g) for spinning wool (Margeson, S. 1993, 184). This example weighs 32.21g and so it seems likely that it may have been intended to spin a heady material such as wool.
The dating of unstratified spindle whorls is difficult. However, Egan (1998, 256) has argued that there was an apparent lack of interest in developing decorative versions of spindle whorls during the Medieval period, compared to the decorative examples of Roman and Saxon periods. Although decorated examples are known from the Medieval period, it seems more likely that such a decorative example is earlier and this artefact therefore dates to the Roman or Saxon period. | Subjects: | Lead | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Creator: | Boughton, Dot - Portable Antiquities Scheme | Identifier: | http://www.findsdatabase.org.uk/hms/pas_... | Language: | en-GB | Go to resource |
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